kVA demand charge could amount to 30% of your spend
Your municipal electricity bill may not be purely based on the amount of energy your business consumes, infact in most instances kVA Demand Charge is a more expensive component.
Maximum Demand
A relatively new concept for municipal billing is a “max demand charge”. A power related demand charge (measured in kVA) which has massive implications on your billing cycle.
If your municipal charges include a component called a demand charge. This charge is based upon your highest recorded demand during a billing period, which is the maximum amount of electricity supplied to your site in any 30 minute interval.
- All customers use Real Power which does the work at your site and is measured in kilowatts or kW.
- All customers also use Reactive Power which creates magnetic or electric fields required for many inductive loads (such as electric motors) and is measured in kVAr.
- The total of Real Power and Reactive Power used at your site is measured in kVA.
Reducing kVA demand charge
The basic concept of reducing the demand charge is a concept called “load-shifting” wherein non-critical loads are moved or shifted to demand power at a different time of the day. Whilst effective, this practice proves very difficult in a routine business environment.
Supply Shifting
Through a proprietary control matrix of PV energy and secondary power source (battery storage or diesel genset) we are able to shift supply of power from utility to PV whilst managing maximum contracted load. This process guarantees reduced kVA demand without changing power operating protocols within the business environment.
Guaranteed Reduction
Whilst PV is monumental in reducing both energy consumption (kWH) and power (kW) , the latter is a hard pressed assurance with fluctuating irradiance. One poor performing 30 minute increment could see demand spike to maximum contracted load and negate the kVA demand reduction.
Find out how we can reduce your Max kVA Demand charge
Speak to one of our commercial specialists to reduce your kVA demand charges within a guaranteed framework
